GreenishLady

Originally Blogging the Artist's Way. Thoughts, musings, experience of the 12-week course, January to March 2006. And after that?.... Life, creativity, writing. Where does it all meet? Here, perhaps.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Journals





Blue Dog asked about our journals, and as I've been using my brand new digital camera, and experimenting, and struggling, and trying, and giving up, and coming back to trying, and finally SUCCEEDED in figuring how to upload photos, here is a photo of a bunch of my journals. The black-covered notebooks on the left are my Morning Pages notebooks. When I first did MPs I used loose leaf paper and stuck them in a file folder, adding a shiny bird or fish sticker to the folder-cover for each day's pages, but over the past couple of years, these are the notebooks I use. they are very plain, 320-page books with narrow lines.

Beside those, there are a stack of smaller notebooks - my Gratitude Journals, in which I write Ten Things for which I am Grateful each night. I'm now on my 6th notebook. I repeat my gratitudes frequently, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Lately, this community of AW bloggers features quite often!

The notebooks on the right have shiny or shimmery covers, usually spiral-bound, and are my poetry/writing journals, my day-to-day writing books, that come to workshops or groups with me, that I jot ideas in, play around with words. There should be a couple more in that stack, but they are on the missing-list at the moment. There are a lot of possible places in my house they could be!

At the front, the three slightly fancier-looking notebooks are my Artist's Way or Creativity journals, where I do the exercises or tasks from AW or other creativity programs, write an annual Review of the Year around the time of my birthday, record plans and goals, or journal about issues specifically about creative projects.

After I'd taken the photo, I realise there are a few other notebooks that should be there. A sketchbook or two, a book I carried for a few months, sticking in tickets, found objects, making notes, more visual than most of these, and the notebook that I bought near the end of the '98 Artist Way, to record dreams and wishes.

Lot of paper... lot of ink... lot of dreams. I'm a bit embarrassed that they aren't on the whole very attractive. - The yellow creativity notebook I did decorate with cut-out flowers, and I quite like the look of that, but when I've seen the beautiful collaged covers some people put on their journals, these look very boring, but they are like comfortable cardigans, friends and companions to me. They don't need to look fancy on the outside. On the inside, they have taken my shape, and fit me.

4 Comments:

At 23/2/06 4:36 am, Blogger Laura said...

I think your journals are gorgeous! And I notice that there are a lot of colors there - that they are relatively simple (and so seem to me at least like they could hold anything) and yet they are these beautiful colors - they are lovely!

 
At 23/2/06 5:17 pm, Blogger gkgirl said...

i felt the same way
after i posted pictures of my journals
i think
because they are sooooo
important to me
and that even every cover
holds a different memory for me
that when i try to see them
from someone else's perspective,
its just not the same...
thanks for the sweet comment
on mine
and for posting yours
:)

 
At 23/2/06 5:18 pm, Blogger gkgirl said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At 25/2/06 5:38 pm, Blogger kellie said...

Oooooh, neato!! Thank you for showing your lovely journals. This is such a fun show-and-tell! And they are pretty and colorful--and I especially like the yellow one with flowers! It's quite an accomplishment to have written so much. Your commitment with the gratitude journal is particularly inspiring. I will have to take that up again.

 

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